November 15, 2011

The Water Environment Association of Utah (WEAU) is the Utah member association of the Water Environment Federation (WEF). Membership in this organization has enhanced my graduate studies and interest in water/wastewater treatment more than any other things during my studies. It has offered: comradery with others passionate about water treatment, competitions on state and national levels, conferences which go above and beyond to reach out, teach, and encourage students. One of the things I like best about this organization is that everybody seems to recognize everybody elses' contribution to the industry--by recognizing that everybody has an important contribution makes it so that you don't feel like you're better than the next guy or lady. Plant managers depend on their operators, operators respect their managers, senior engineers and student engineers talk together. Overall, it has been a great group of people to associate with and I look forward to many more years with this organization. Plus, the local WEAU has good food and is free for students (but I recommend a very affordable national/state membership for $30 for students because it comes with the really cool WET magazine).

With that said, WEAU is also a great venue to present on your research via presentations and posters. Below is a link to the most recent presentation I shared which includes slides from some ICDRA 2011 presentations by Zhao Hai, Fang Yang, Jay Cheng, Eric Lam, Klaus Appenroth, and Robert Bell:

This presentation also includes the most recently analyzed pharmaceutical results. We exposed duckweed to Acetaminophen, Sulfamethoxazole, Nicotine, Cotinine, Carbamazepine, Progesterone, and Fluoxetine, and then analyzed liquid concentrations over a 4-day period in the ng/L levels.